


Te Quiero

by rosecat13



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 21:40:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecat13/pseuds/rosecat13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos doesn't know how to give up, and after so many years, he refuses to let a relationship fade that was doomed from the start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Te Quiero

**Author's Note:**

> @NightValeSciFi, @NVSSP_Rookie, @actual_cecil inspired, as usual. Wow. Sad fic.

It’s been seven years since Rookie became Sheriff Rookie and things haven’t gotten easier. If anything, they’ve gotten worse. And not because of new policies, or extraneous laws, or anything else.

He didn’t expect the hole in his heart to be so big, and only get burnt around the edges and healing wrong, and never getting filled back in. Cecil is his life, Cecil is his love, but Rookie was right there with him, and now that was all gone. It was gone seven years ago, and Carlos is still fighting for something that was never his to begin with.

Once a year he heads out to the abandoned mineshaft and he waits for someone he knows will never come. The first time, a young SSP officer, someone to replace Rookie, who had long since moved up the ranks with enthusiasm, vigor, and determination, comes to take him home. And Carlos, with just enough black hair that it outweighed the gray, went with him. The second year, he curses at them in Spanish. The man tries to take him into custody but Carlos was hardened by the city now, and Rookie was a harsher combat partner than any of the young men who try to take him on. Two years in a row they’re left lying in the dust, handcuffed and tied up with their own equipment, and Carlos yells vengeance at the sky, challenging Rookie to come down and fight him himself, almighty Sheriff; rulemaker, iron-fisted regulator.

Two years after the first civilian liason, not on the exact day, but sometime close, Carlos gives him a ring. Steel. Gunmetal. A plain band with nothing but an inner engraving. Te quiero.

Te quiero. I lust for you. I love you, in the way that my body wants you. I want but I cannot have, te quiero, it is passion, physical, it burns, te quiero, I need more, te quiero, at the end of the day it is “I love you” but it is so much more than that to someone who knows the intricacies of the language, the nooks and crannies in Spanish, the ones that look it up, and then look it up again.

Rookie says it wrong when he presses Carlos against the alley wall, eighteen and a half years before he kills Night Vale’s Sheriff, and takes the title for his own. “Tee qweer-o,” and that’s how Carlos knows he means it. He’s not parroting the phrase Carlos murmurs to him, meaningless except in the way it rolls of the tongue. Carlos cries, and it’s all a merciful relief, because there’s some sort of persistence of time there, there’s some solidity in messed up words, and they spend too much time in that alley; bricks press against Carlos’s back and both of their breaths hot and hushed, as the sky turns from vermillion to a muted, soft sage and the stars peek from their corners.

The lower ranking officers know the legend of Sheriff and the Scientist from the Outside. They say the sheriff’s badge on his chest is steel, made from the ring given all those years ago. The ones that talk too loud are taken care of swiftly, by Rookie himself; that kind of talk isn’t allowed. It isn’t safe.

When Rookie dispatches the Sheriff, Carlos doesn’t want to believe it was over. There’s a talk, a long talk. There are words said that were held back for years. Kisses too dirty to speak of again, sex too desperate, too meaningful, to even try to recall. It hurts to think about. Twenty years after that first liaison, Rookie walks out of Carlos’s life, and somehow Carlos thinks that it means he wants him to forget that part of his life ever happened. And then there’s a choice given, and it’s a genuine one, a caring one. A merciful one. Rookie says, you can take Cecil, and go, forever. Or you can stay, and become a citizen. And that implies following the rules. You will be treated as all citizens are. You will not be allowed to leave.  He thinks it’s a loaded question, Rookie expects for him to run.

Carlos holds Cecil’s hand ever tighter, and stays.

The nights are long and Carlos’s insomnia is a moon that never wanes. He writes notes. He is a conspirator in a land that belongs to him. He writes his notes in Spanish mixed with codes he invents, and so far, they haven’t been cracked.

There’s notebooks full of observations. Carlos was a scientist, above all else. He rips out pages twice a year and sends them to the Sheriff, and he never knows if he reads them or not. He sends them back in time, from his last observations to the first. The spiral notebook is worn and skinny from the pages ripped out, the covers nearly touching from the malnourished pages in the middle. Carlos takes out the first observations. The date is in late October. The writing is faded.

 

New SSP Officer.

-“Rookie”

-Antagonizing

-Alpha Male attitude (childhood? Motivations?)

-Eager

-Seems determined

-Infuriating

-Further investigation required (?)

 

Rookie had been an experiment. What was an SSP officer? How did they work, how did they think? Carlos’s notes grew more meticulous over time. Piercing blue eyes. Hums, sometimes, but only in a lower register. Gets twitchy at mentions of re-training, and re-education. Short brown hair. Tastes of the air before snow.

It never snows in Night Vale. On New Year’s, three years after Rookie does away with the Sheriff, Carlos kisses Cecil, and for a moment, forgets about the man in the balaclava. He is happy, and Cecil tastes of void, and something sweet, like hope. He doesn’t laugh as much anymore. Cecil worries. The gray at his temples is spreading into streaks, and Carlos is a worrier as much as Cecil is a radio broadcaster. They sleep in the same bed. They kiss with fervor, they make love, and a year before Carlos gives Rookie a gunmetal ring, he gives Cecil one of sterling silver, “te amo” engraved on the inside, with dark opal and amethyst stones inlaid in the band.

He never stops loving Cecil. His love never wanes. But Rookie leaves a hole in his heart the size of a bullet, and it cauterizes the moment it happens. At night Carlos can hear the wind whistling through it, and wonders if he’ll ever come back.

A month after Rookie started to keep a steel ring in a drawer by his bed he sends Carlos a knife made of what seemed to be sharpened glass. It’s not. It’s something infinitely stronger, something near unbreakable. Something Carlos can defend himself with.

The scientist was not always a scientist. He was a lover, and a baker, and an asker of infinite questions. He looked up at the sky and wondered, and it imprinted on Rookie’s mind. Carlos sought and Carlos wrote and Carlos tried to improve and reinvent and make things better. It didn’t work; it never worked. But he tried. He had fire. Rookie liked it when he fought.

One month after the first liaison, he tries to convince Carlos to wear a dog collar, and it doesn’t go well. Carlos is insulted and he bites, and they tumble and kiss, and fuck, and when Carlos is panting, brown flushed cheek pressed against the firm surface of Rookie’s chest, there’s a click as the man secures it around the Latin man’s neck. Black leather. “Bad girl,” he says when Carlos bites his neck, and pins him to the ground. He calls him pup and princess, and there’s nothing bad that comes out of it in the end. The lab starts to smell more like frantic lovemaking than chemicals, and Carlos finds a use for insomnia that isn’t philosophical ponderings, and drawn-out hypotheticals.

Rookie was never one to sit and spin, and Carlos wonders at first how he takes sitting in an office in a blimp and looking down at the city that he now owns. He wonders if he’s happy. Rookie has everything he ever wanted now. His city. His people. He has the power that he craved, his ambitions fulfilled; he has everything at his fingertips. He could decide the life of someone with the snap of his fingers, he could make a law by saying a few words. He was Godlike now, and just as untouchable.

And Carlos felt like he lost everything.

Seven years after Rookie walked out on Carlos for something better, someone more skilled comes to the mineshaft and gets ready to fight the famous Scientist from the Outside. And Carlos sees something he hasn’t in forever, not in years. When the sun strikes the balaclava just right Carlos can see the smirk under the cloth, and the glint of a cocksure man shines through the sunglasses that he knows hides bright blue eyes. He’s quick on his feet, the best of the bunch Carlos has fought. They hit hard, they don’t pull punches. Some of the rookies that come through haven’t learned how to be merciless yet, but this one knows.

Carlos sees the smirk persist as the sun rises, and he realizes just who it is for sure. And he falters, just for a moment, and he wants to speak, he needs to say something, but he doesn’t have time between the rise and fall of punches and the way the man knocks the breath out of Carlos’s chest. He knows it’s Rookie. He’s finally come, and Carlos stops trying to attack, and goes on defense. He wants to make this last as long as possible as Rookie’s feet kick up desert dust and the wind whips through the thick black locks of Latin hair, and Carlos wants to rip off the glasses and make the man look him in the goddamned eyes. But soon he’s flat on his back and trying to breathe; Rookie somehow always left him that way. And the officer offers a hand. Carlos takes it, and stands.

Rookie leaves without saying a word, and Carlos falls to his knees, and he cries. He knows that Rookie thinks he cries too much for a full-grown man, but he can shut the hell up, because he’s mourning someone that never left, but just refuses to see him. Someone that he still loves. Someone that still loves him back.

In the first few months of their affair, Carlos cared too much about treading the right lines, and finding the proper routes to take with whatever the relationship was. He was cautious and careful and everything an attentive lover was. But Rookie didn’t want attentive, he wanted passion, and violence. And Carlos felt himself falling deeper and deeper into a trap that started with a gun to the head and ended in dark nights in a lab alone, and the name of the game was Russian Roulette. And instead of backing away Carlos kept pulling that metaphorical trigger, twenty seven years later. He delved into the SSP database until every article title was labelled “zorrito”. He sent messages in code, through letters that may have gone unopened. He left corn muffins on the front porch, and hoped that someday he’d find the tin empty when he opened the door. They were always there.

He knew he was being watched; it was Night Vale. They were always watching. And he knew that Rookie watched too, from a distance. There a veil between them, something impermeable, but something that didn’t seem real enough to keep them apart. It infuriated Carlos. He was fighting a one-man war, one he was perpetually losing. No one, not even Rookie, wanted him to win, save for Cecil. Cecil cared about his mental health, and perhaps in the back of the man’s mind, all he wanted to do was watch Carlos let go.

Carlos had fire in him and he refused to sputter out. Two years after Rookie melted a ring into a star he almost has the lab burned down. The Sheriff looked down and wondered over it, but then didn’t. He hesitated. He doubted. And Carlos was down in his self-made prison of glass tubes and metal supports, looking over blueprints and stolen schedules, information from the SSP automated system that he definitely shouldn’t have. Rookie loved it when he fought. And seven years after he left for the job he deserved, the thing he wanted more than anything, there’s a man on Earth still fighting for the chance to get him back.

It’s not a choice. There is no options for Carlos as he pores over now decade-old notes and outdated behavioral charts. There’s cassette tapes of secretly recorded conversations, and he wears them out until Rookie’s voice is warped and far from its distant reality. Carlos closes his eyes, and tries to remember what he looks like, as the gray grows into his eyebrows and stubble. One morning after he’s fallen asleep at his desk, there’s a sprig of foxglove placed in a test tube beside him and a note that reads “you’re starting to piss people off”, and it’s the only thing from Rookie Carlos destroys, and the words of condemnation die by Bunsen burner.

One year after their first meeting, they lay on Carlos’s cot in the back of the lab, saturated with sweat, and sex. It is four in the morning and time stands perfectly still as Carlos lazily plants kisses against Rookie’s firm chest, and the officer has a hand in that perfect hair, uncharacteristically calm. Rookie can only stay like this for a minutes, Carlos knows, but he makes the best of it. The unsaid clause of the contract. Carlos needs this, after they’ve fucked hard, after he knows he’ll be sore in the morning. He needs someone to hold him, as he murmurs te quiero into pale skin that hasn’t seen the sun in so long. Rookie continues petting him, and doesn’t repeat it. He expresses his feelings by softly tugging Carlos’s hair, and making the man lying on him wince.

After Rookie tells Carlos that he can’t see him anymore, after the night of talking, and sex, and making up lost time spent on pride and blind restraint, Carlos goes numb. It lasts a few days and doesn’t wear off until it’s too late; until he’s gone. There’s no time to say no, there’s no more opportunities to talk to him.

A year and a half after they started playing cat and mouse, before rings, and stars, Rookie disappeared. His presence was too common. He was too common. He left for a week and there was no one to answer for his absence. His files were frozen. No amount of pleading to the phone would get the scientist answers. Carlos would shuffle about in the lab, phone cradled to his ear, and he would glean no knowledge from it. And a week later when Rookie reappears there is shouting and cursing and Carlos tries to put Rookie back into a place that maybe never really existed. A place with him. A place that Carlos carved out of sand and notebook paper, a place that he made out of corn-flour mix, a place that Carlos forced into the world with nothing but science and willpower. He defied the laws of physics and made a something out of nothing. He tried. And Rookie falls back into a similar but different place, and that’s the throes of passion, as the two rut and yell at each other, as Carlos tries to choke the ambition out of Rookie, and Rookie attempts to domesticate the rebel in Carlos. Neither ever succeed.

It turns into a cycle of Rookie leaving and coming, and the dry spells get longer, and more frequent. And one day, a year and ten months after they first met, Rookie returns from thirteen days away, opening the door like the lab is his own home. He walks to Carlos and expects him to yell, to fight, to struggle; Carlos just points to the door, and does not give him any words. The message is clear. He will not be fucked with. He will not be a toy. He is not a plaything. Rookie antagonizes him, teases, prods. He expects the behavior Carlos has always given him. The spirit of the rebel, but Carlos lives out this battle in silence, and Rookie leaves, shocked and dumb.

And when a year and ten months turns into two years, Rookie keeps the gunmetal ring, and Carlos knows he will not be fucked with anymore. He’s proved himself self-reliant, and it makes a fire ignite not only in Carlos, but in Rookie, and ultimately, it’s what makes the attraction last.

A month after Carlos is given a knife not made of glass but of something infinitely stronger, Rookie sneaks into the window, as he’s done many times before. The moon is high in the sky and the smell of cocoa spiced with cinnamon lays heavy in the air. Carlos is at the stove and Rookie slides in behind him, arms wrap around the man’s waist, his chin resting in the noir halo of soft, curled hair. And Carlos does not flinch. He’s learned to detect the slight movements in the air, he knows the whisper of SSP-issue cloth.  He is infinitely more attentive; he knows how to fight. Rookie trained it into him, whether he liked it or not. They sparred, they hit and bit and tossed each other, and embraced softly under the familiar glow of fluorescent lighting, the walls glinting with the reflections of light off glassware. Carlos squeezes the hand on his stomach softly, and Rookie does not tense. He lets it remain there a few moments longer, and Carlos stirs the pot of hot cocoa; he made enough for two.

Seven years, one month, and seventeen days after Rookie starts his new life, Carlos lays on the cot in his lab, and does what Rookie had always wanted him to do. A tail plug. A collar.   He waits for the man who he knows will never come. The radio buzzes from the nightstand.

“You look ridiculous. We’re all laughing at you.”

“…Rookie?”

“Sheriff.”

“Rookie… you know, you don’t really have any friends; I know it’s just you. You wouldn’t want to share me anyways.”

“I believe a while ago, I think I was the one who suggested-”

“I’m wearing the tail plug.”

“…I know.”

“And the collar you gave me.”

“I know, citizen. Are you just going to lay there, or give me a show?”

“You…ah, you know, it’d be better with you here.”

“Of course it would be.”

“I’d let you fuck me, hard.”

“You always did.”

“Te quiero.”

“…”

“Te… te quiero... Rookie…”

“…Te quiero. Now fuck your fist.”

“Nh…haa…. Rookie, I… I miss you-”

“Faster.”

“Ah…oh… ah, Rookie…. I’ve….aaah… you, you should-”

“You should turn over. Your ass should be in the air, citizen. I want you to milk yourself.”

“I miss-ssed the sound of your voice-”

“Of course you did. It’s one of a kind. Faster, citizen. How much have you slacked off since we stopped fucking? Are you and The Voice still doing lollipops and rainbows? I thought I taught you better.”

“A-ahhh… it’s different… different with Cecil…nnh… I told you that…”

“It’s been a while.”

“it’s been too long. I missed you. I hate you.”

“You’re still fighting.”

“There’s some things in t-this world worth fighting for, Rookie!”

“Drama queen, princess. You were always melodramatic. Faster.”

“I h-hate you!..a-aaahhh…”

“Sounds like you’re enjoying yourself, regardless.”

“A-aaah….ahh…. Rookie… Rookie please…”

“…Just pretend I’m threading my fingers in your hair, princess.”

“Aaohh… Rookie…. I miss… I miss you…”

“Faster, come on… you’re doing so well, sweetheart, come on…”

“I…aaah…. I want you… I want you here…”

“I’m right here. Milk yourself. I want to see you come hard.”

“Nhhh…Ahhh, ahhh… Oh Rookie… Rookie… oh f-fuck, dios por favor…”

“That’s right, you speak your foreign language, I want to see you incoherent by the time I’m done with you, pup.”

“Rookie… a-ahhhm, ah… haa…. Dios, Rookie, por favor, te necesito, te amo, te quiero, por favor, te quiero…!”

“Te quiero.”

Carlos shudders and releases, shouting Rookie’s name with a sob. It takes a minute for him to regain his senses and then, “Rookie, Rookie, please, please don’t disappear, please don’t… don’t leave again..”

“Shh,” his voice over the radio still sounds like smirking, and Carlos feels like he can feel his breath against his cheek, the sky before snow. “I’m right here, citizen. I’m right here.”

“Don’t leave.” Carlos’s voice is unsteady. He picks up the radio and brings it into the cot with him, and begs, “Rookie, please… por favor… don’t…. don’t leave…”

“You can hear me, can’t you?” The smirk’s gone soft. He can probably hear Carlos crying. “Stop that. Stop… Carlos, stop that…”

“Shut up,” he whispers. “Shut up… and tell me something that I want to hear.”

“For now, I’m here with you.” The voice is soothing. It’s not Cecil, it’s not the practiced air of someone who speaks for a living. It’s genuine though, and Carlos rests his forehead to the radio. “I’m not going anywhere. You did so well.”

Carlos takes some deep breaths, and holds it close.

“What do you want me to say, Carlos?”

“Tell me you love me,” he says, eyes fixed at the ceiling.

“Te quiero.”

Carlos looks at the radio, and shakes his head, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I love you too. Tell me you’re coming here. Tell me that you’re going to be here soon. Tell me you’re going to hold me like you used to, after we had sex. You agreed to that, you said you would-“

”This is the best I can do, citizen. But I’m here. I’ll stay here until you fall asleep.”

“I’m never going to sleep.” Carlos’s voice is bitter, and it elicits a laugh from Rookie.

“Seven years… seven years, and you never stopped fighting. You’ve gotten into a lot of trouble, you know. You’ve caused me a lot of trouble.”

“Mhm.”

“Are you even a bit ashamed of how you refuse to let go?”

“You always liked me best when I was fighting,” Carlos murmurs.

“Mm..”

“You took the ring, and you stopped fucking around with the coming and going. For eighteen fucking years, we had it good. I was happy. You were happy. Cecil was happy. Everything was wonderful. And then-“ Carlos’s voice catches in his chest, and he can’t bring himself to say the words. “I hate you,” he tells him instead. “I hate you so much. I hate what you’ve done to me. What you’ve made me suffer through, I hate you.”

“I hate you too, princess.”

Carlos grits his teeth and his eyes squeeze shut. He shakes, and he distantly hears Rookie tell him to stop crying again. “Come back,” Carlos begs. “I miss you. We miss you.”

“Shh…” Rookie’s voice is soft on his ears. “…You want me to tell you some things that you want to hear, Carlos?”

Carlos makes some noises that mean yes.                       

There’s a soft sigh from the radio. “I miss you. I miss… everything. I miss the fights. I miss liaisons. I miss your hair, that perfect… your fucking, perfect hair. I miss holding a gun to your head, I miss your stupid chunky glasses. I miss your stubble, and your lips around my cock. I miss you. I miss your corn muffins. Remember when we won the annual elementary school bake sale? Scars don’t fade. I have mine. You have yours.”

“I love you,” escapes Carlos’s lips, and it’s broken.

“Close your eyes, Carlos.”

Carlos does so, trying to steady his breath.

“Right now, I’m being lowered from the blimp by a rope ladder. I’m landing in the front yard.. right in front of the lab. The grass is dead. You haven’t been taking care of it very well. …Well then again it’s winter. Alright. Nevermind. In any case… it looks just the same as it always did. The shutters are filthy.”

Carlos hears a soft sound outside, and he doesn’t open his eyes.

“You still leave your windows unlocked… have you learned nothing? Was all that training for naught? Really, Carlos…” The voice sounds stronger, closer and Carlos hugs the radio tighter. “…you disappoint me. Now turn over so you face away from the door.”

Carlos obliges.

“Remember what I always said about you being a good little pup? I stand by that.” There’s a presence behind Carlos, he can feel the heat radiating off it. He doesn’t open his eyes. He doesn’t look over his shoulder. He rubs the radio, and hopes the it gives him more of what he needs to hear. He’s worked so hard to hear these words.

None else come, until the figure gets on the bed and conforms to Carlos’s slightly curled figure on the bed. Lips rest against Carlos’s temple. “What do you want me to say, citizen?”

Carlos lets out a sob and Rookie’s arms wrap around his waist. “You’re ruining it,” he tells him, kissing his hair. “You’re crying like a baby. You always cry like a baby.”

Carlos grabs Rookie’s hands tight until his knuckle go pale, “Don’t leave me,” he whispers, voice raw, “Rookie, please… please don’t leave me. Don’t leave me again.”

“I’m here until you fall asleep,” Rookie whispers, and Carlos turns over. His eyes are red from crying and all he can do is bury into the man’s chest. Rookie is warm, and real, and everything that Carlos has craved for so long now. He swallows down his sobbing and just shakes, and Rookie’s hands find his back and his hair, soothing him. The steel star on Rookie’s bulletproof vest is cold against his cheek.

“Rest, citizen…” Rookie  tilts Carlos’s chin up and kisses him softly, before letting him bury back into the warmth of his chest. “I’ll be here when you fall asleep.”

 

 


End file.
